


Impure Heroines

by Hawkbringer



Series: On Florence [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Bottom Will Graham, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Multi, Murder Family, No Beta, Role Reversal, Rough Draft, Stream of Consciousness, Subspace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:27:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23790073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hawkbringer/pseuds/Hawkbringer
Summary: Will's stubborn insistence on subspace, on orders, on chemical treatment for his neuroses, annoys Hannibal, even after they have, for all intents and purposes, eloped to Florence, Italy, and allowed Abigail to survive them, and make her own way in the world.A rough draft stream-of-consciousness piece of writing about Will's reasons for chasing subspace from Hannibal's hands that spawned a canon-divergent AU where Will did NOT betray Hannibal to the FBI, and thus Mizumono does not have to happen. (inspired by chapter 17 of Black Mirror by Nerve_Itch.)
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Series: On Florence [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1713892
Kudos: 3





	Impure Heroines

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Black Mirror](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2456099) by [Nerve_Itch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerve_Itch/pseuds/Nerve_Itch). 



> origin: 31st july 2015
> 
> Black Mirror Chapter 17 Quote:
> 
> "You failed to take action that would have defended yourself, back then, out of fear for how effectively you might retaliate." 
> 
> Ouch. This hits me where I live. I'm imagining Mads Mikkelsen's voice narrating, holding Will's head upright, thumbs tracing gently over his throat, and the scene fading to Will imagining a room full of his dead and bleeding colleagues, the 'carnage inside reflected outside' as Hannibal said earlier in the chapter. How effectively Will might, saying 'no' to Jack Crawford, shut more than one door in his face. How /many/ things he would then have said 'no' to. How many doors would then have closed in his face. How /effective/ he would have been. 
> 
> And so he has been seeking subspace. He has been seeking /a way out/ for all of his existence, and Hannibal is giving that to him - the perfect dirty-talk partner because /nothing/ you say, /none/ of the dark things inside of you, will /ever/ shock or offend him. He will greet your macabre and unsympathetic imaginings with varying degrees of delight and boredom. The more imaginative, the better. 
> 
> How does one /truly/ win in a deal with the Devil, as Bryan Fuller calls it during the Mizumono commentaries? Would Will have gotten the upper hand by agreeing to go with him? To, at that final supper with a ribcage of lamb, innocent, sacrificed, and picked clean, on the table before them, to have /admitted/ to his plans with Jack Crawford, to have given up the Other Woman, as Steve Lightfoot, one of the writers, phrased it? Putting truth to Gideon's facetious words to Chilton while in the therapy cage with Crawford watching - 'it's not your actions and betrayal I resent, Dr. Chilton. It's just the /lies/.'

He /would/ have offered Will his forgiveness, immediately and completely. He would have made Will suffer somewhat during their stay in Florence, of course. He would not exactly /let it go/. He would /test/ Will, to see how far along the path of Becoming Will really was. Trust would be hard to rebuild between them. But it would not have /completely died/, as it did on the floor beside Will as Abigail bled out between his fingers at the very end of Mizumono, before the stinger. 

The ravenstag would have been skittish, rarely seen. More ominous and looming than before, fleeing into shadows like a wolf planning an ambush. Eyes flashing in the dark. But it would have stalked closer at the smell of blood. Perhaps the one Studiolo man, perhaps Dimmond's. Perhaps Will's own, if he offers himself for such games. 

Something less utterly damaging as the linoleum knife. A gunshot perhaps. Chiyoh's? But she has not yet been freed. If Will runs off to Florence with Hannibal, she never will be. Not unless Will flees at some point, perhaps after a night of good sex that Hannibal hadn't drugged him to sleep from then afterwards. It would highlight how betrayed Hannibal would feel, for it to have been really /good/ sex. 

Mmm, it would be dangerous for him to return with Chiyoh in tow. Will would /definitely/ be defenestrated from that caboose, but would talk more openly about his relationship with Hannibal, and Chiyoh would throw him off for pretending to a station above his own, or for simply getting in the way of her plan to cage Hanni. But he would walk back, aided by the Ravenstag, and perhaps come to rescue Hannibal from Chiyoh. 

What action could he take that Hannibal would /not/ take badly? Standing in front of her gun with his arms outspread? He would be summarily shot. But perhaps pull some jujitsu move and attempt to choke Chiyoh to death as they scrabbled on the floor. I could see that. Him then tripping her as she stepped over him. Him feigning more injury than he had, wresting consciousness from her at a critical moment. Hannibal would have to inform Will, who would be standing over Chiyoh, slumped over Hannibal's prostrate form, (why would Hannibal be on the ground at this point?) No, she's on the ground, Will is standing up, and staring at Hannibal over her prone body. Hannibal is standing a foot or two away. 

He tries, with a faint tilt of a smile on his face, to explain that the woman meant no harm and Will would /literally walk over top of her/ to grasp Hannibal's collar and suck at his lips. Dominant in that moment, /so/ dominant. Hannibal would be /pleased/ to let him. It'd make his head spin. OH, PERHAPS WILL IS PHYSICALLY TALLER BECAUSE HE IS STANDING ON CHIYOH'S BACK. YES. 

Hmm, where is Abigail in all this? Is she /here/? Did she flee to Florence /with/ them? It's clear, after rewatching Mizumono, that Hannibal sees her pretty much just as a pet. And he doesn't mind slaughtering animals, though he would /never/ do it for the sadism. He understands /why/ naming an animal and keeping it as a pet would cause /other people/ to feel bad about killing and/or eating it. But that psychology doesn't apply to him. He is the Devil, Mr. Graham.

What to do about Abigail in this scenario? He would certainly be willing to humor her, particularly for as long as she played along, was eating out of his hand, was shivering and scared with no allies, with no idea what to do. But the second she got some ideas into her head - the second she started /trying to survive Hannibal/, not just the things he had done to her - the second she starts to form plans of her own, the second she starts to manipulate Hannibal - OH, it would be so violent. She would /easily/ make Hannibal underestimate her. She would make her attempts at freedom, asking to learn the language, begging to go on sight-seeing trips with the two of them, demurring to just one of them when Hannibal cites the current political climate as a reason the three of them can't be a family in public - when she would try shit like that, Hannibal would pat her head, metaphorically, and indulge her whims, and keep a much closer watch on her and think her mind restricted too. 

And when something went /really/ bad, when something became obvious to /Hannibal/ when Abigail had already been playing Will /much/ more easily, the same way she did in the hospital, making him take her fishing and shit - Will would hold a gun to Hannibal and /perhaps even shoot him/ to prove he was serious - dude, it'd be super-cool if he took off one of those extra fingers he supposedly has on his left hand - because Will wants to let Abigail go. He wants her to have a freer life. 

And they talk, despite the guns loaded and cocked - both pointing at Hannibal, of course - and Hannibal, master that he is, lays out a plan for her to escape both of them forever. Will is to stab her outside a hospital and then let himself be captured. He will be extradited to the US for the murder of Randall Tier, and Hannibal will return to fetch him. 

No, that can't be right. Will has already been to crazy-jail. Perhaps Hannibal has forgiven Will more than we know. He insists Will be the one to stab her - perhaps he, Hannibal, guts Abigail the same way he was going to gut Will in Mizumono - and they leave her bleeding on a sidewalk somewhere, perhaps pushed out of a car with stolen lisence plates, etc. LOL, how bout it's a stolen polizia car and the one who gets framed for taking it out of the station is Pazzi or someone, who wanted to impress his new wife with its flash or something. (IDK if Italian polizia keep cars acquired in drug busts or anything, like US police do. Yes, I like that. Let's frame Pazzi.) And Hannibal leaves a bank account open for her upon her recovery and release, and her dental and DNA records match something back in the States, indeed they do, but no one looks for them. 

The girl speaks perfect Florentine Italian, spins a story about visiting relatives, being a recent orphan, and as she calls, crying on the phone, the emotionally wounded family on the other end is primed to receive her when she is released. 

(A suitably rich family had been slaughtered, the parents in full display and exactly /nothing/ of the kidnapped-presumed-dead girl-child found at the scene. Hannibal and Will had her body in the trunk as the three of them 'exchanged' her for Abigail at the gates of the hospital. The Italian girl's face seemed to have changed much with adolescence, as the put-upon family would discover if they bothered to check her face against old photographs of their neice - but they had few, and none of her since puberty. Hannibal had, of course, been thorough, with Will's help, and filched plenty of valuables from the murdered rich parents' house to diguise the taking of almost every photograph. There had been no need to be /so/ thorough - nobody doubts Abigail at any point, and she leaves within months to 'travel Europe' and tells them it is time for her to make her own way in the world, but that she will send them postcards. She does, dutifully, a handful a month, that drop off during the summer, and one final one for Christmas that reeks of goodbye. The brother and sister in law cry over it, of course, and have it framed beside a picture of the three of them together - The only family in Abigail's life that she manages to touch and yet leave intact. (aside from her murder dads.)

Will and Hannibal go on without her. Will continues to act out and sink into Hannibal's world, dressing more nicely and occasionally stealing his aftershave. He becomes more aware of Hannibal's incredible sense of smell, and ensures any infractions he incurs are scentable ones. 

He talks with beautiful women, smears their perfume all over his front as he rides home on the motorbike of one of them. Hannibal hates that he can only trust what Will has said of their encounter, wishes he could trust Will now. Perhaps this leads to an interesting, rather dub-con drugging/hypnosis session where Hannibal has Will recreate the conversation word for word until he is satisfied. This sequel fic would need to follow Hannibal's distrust of Will and watch it finally break. Would Chiyoh be a thing that happens /here/? That would be /epic/. 

She returns, gun in hand, barely recognizable, with Will stumbling in behind her, misreading her motives and attempting to protect Hannibal, getting himself injured in the process. Then he rises up, doing some jujitsu move, thoroughly brains her against the floor, perhaps inducing concussion - he has little practice at this, Hannibal allows, watching Will inflict injury that perhaps he did not mean to - and the way he swarms all over Hannibal, checking him for injuries and tilting his chin back for a soul-searching kiss. 

\---

...Hmm, the more I write this, the more OOC that makes Hannibal seem. He doesn't need to /trust/ Will, and he wouldn't be hung up on /not/ trusting him. He wouldn't engage in some elaborate self-flagellation exercise in order to check whether he /can/ trust Will or not. He wouldn't put his life in Will's hands in order to see if Will is /trustworthy/. 

No. Hannibal would do /that/ for the /thrill/. He is the /devil/, after all. He doesn't need to trust Will Graham, he just has to be able to predict how he will act. So OOC-ness in Will Graham would be something Hannibal would be watching for very closely, and he'd feel both intrigue and a pedestrian kind of ruffled-feathers-jealousy when such 'new' behaviors arose. He would take care of them, tho. They would never be unknown quantities, they would never bowl him over. Will would be a tsunami entirely bendable to his will. 

Will never says 'no' to anything, not anything important. He has /negotiated/ and he has commanded things of /Hannibal/, but he has never /said no/.

**Author's Note:**

> After posting both this and Pure Heroin, it occurs to me that I may have written this part first... and that Pure Heroin was actually directly inspired by the chapter of Black Mirror referenced above. 
> 
> It has been rare, that lines of dialogue or phrasings of metaphors sink into my mind such that I am no longer sure if they were written by me or by another. Black Mirror had SEVERAL such lines, and that is about as high of praise for a writer and their work as I can give. So go read it, dear fannibals, if you haven't done so already. But be aware that it IS like stepping into pool of black water, and you cannot see the bottom, so you cannot know how deep it goes. 
> 
> (Which is to say that you may just have to stop at some point when the abuse themes get too heavy. I myself did not finish Sisyphean, Black Mirror's sequel, for exactly this reason.)


End file.
